And I Was Right!

Right after the previous entry, I went back to that website to continue whatever it was I was doing.  Only to have them tell me that my session was timed out.

Ok… So I logged in again.  Guess what?  Password wrong.  I try again thinking I’ve made a typo.  Still wrong. Ok… It’s quite easy to make a typo with a password like that.  Try again.  Still still wrong.  Try again.  Get locked out.  Urgh!!

And so I have to reset my password.  Already.  All of 5 minutes after I set it.

I should just not bother to remember the password and reset it every time I have to log in.

This Is Getting Ridiculous…

As with everyone else, I’ve been grappling with the difficulties of having a gazillion passwords to remember.  To simplify my life, my passwords are usually some variation or other of one theme.  (Yes, now that you know that, you can hack into my bank account and steal my life savings of $20.)

That usually works until one comes across a website that says this:

1. Passwords must be at least eight (8) and not more than twenty (20) characters long.
2. Passwords must contain at least three of the following four types of characters: uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and punctuation characters (!, @, #, etc.).
3. Passwords must not contain a sequence of one type of character that is more than 3 characters long, for example (abcd, ABCD, 1234, !@#$) are all invalid sequences.
4. Passwords must not contain spaces or non-printable characters.

Rule No. 1 – Ok.

Rule No. 2 – What? Good grief…

Rule No. 3 – Ok…

Rule No. 4 – I can do that…

So I think up a password that (I thought) satisfies all of the above.  But when I entered and double-entered it, an error message appeared and showed:

1. Passwords must be at least eight (8) and not more than twenty (20) characters long.
2. Passwords must contain at least three of the following four types of characters: uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and punctuation characters (!, @, #, etc.).
3. Passwords must not contain a sequence of one type of character that is more than 3 characters long, for example (abcd, ABCD, 1234, !@#$) are all invalid sequences.
4. Passwords must not contain spaces or non-printable characters.

Then I realised that they don’t really mean “sequence” as in the chronological sequences in the examples they showed, but really meant “string”, in that no more than 3 characters of the same type may reside next to each other.  Yikes!

So I guess one’s password has to look something like that – oyc72!* or YNay%@ or ^#htxQA. But I’m sure they’d rather have you submit something super secure like N%p9$C6h. (Don’t bother, all the above are just examples.)

How does one remember a password like that?  I’m sure they get lots of people asking to reset their passwords every day.